Costa Rica Guide : New Authorized Edition (Central America Ser.) [Paperback]

Paul Glassman (Author)

Book Description

Series: Central America Series | Publication Date: December 1997

From the jungle train in the wild east to the beautiful Pacific beaches, this guide brings to life the fun and excitement of Costa Rica. This completely revised edition gives the reader a tour of the most popular travel destination in Central America. Hundreds of destinations are highlighted, including many which are off the beaten path. Information is provided on the mysterious cloud forest, dense jungle, deserted sandy beaches, white waterfalls and rushing rivers. Features include where to go for watersports, world-class fishing, lodging, restaurants and nightlife, inside tips on visiting national parks, and special places to hike around majestic volcanoes and ancient ruins - plus travel planning advice ranging from responsible eco-touring to taking the kids.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Paul Glassman's Costa Rica Guide is an excellent, thorough, in-depth travel guide to Costa Rica, supplying salient details on the green turtles of Tortugeuro, the volcanic peaks of Irazú, and the lovely beaches of the Nicoya Peninsula, plus all the various ecotours among hundreds of bird and butterfly species and thousands of plants and insects, in habitats ranging from lowland jungle to cloud forest. With river rafting, scuba diving, and sport fishing (oceanic as well as lake and mountain stream), horseback riding, windsurfing, and the citified pleasures of San José, it's small wonder so many visitors to Costa Rica get hooked on the place, not just for annual vacations, but for retirement as well. Glassman clearly knows the country well, and along with comprehensive coverage of hotels (from luxury beachfront cabanas to budget mountainside B & Bs), restaurants (from French, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Lebanese options to Costa Rican specialties like gallo pinto, casado, and plátanos fritos), and activities (rafting and spelunking to bird watching and exploring the national parks), Glassman provides a wide array of candid information--on topics as diverse as retirement, pickpocket precautions, schooling options, paying off the cops, and, most importantly, the various courses and institutions that offer to teach you Spanish. Insightful, reliable, and full of interesting asides, Glassman's book is practical and easy to use--a quality guide to Costa Rica. --Stephanie Gold --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 424 pages
• Publisher: Passport Press Inc. (December 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0930016246
• ISBN-13: 978-0930016241
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,531,260 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This is old material, January 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Open Road's Costa Rica Guide (Paperback)

Hi, I'm Paul Glassman, the author of the original and authorized Costa Rica Guide. Though this book uses my name, it consists entirely of outdated material.

2.0 out of 5 stars Problems with details, July 20, 2000

By 

Jere Gilles "gillesj8" (Columbia, Missouri) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Costa Rica Guide : New Authorized Edition (Central America Ser.) (Paperback)

Each summer I go to Costa Rica with a group of students to do a course in Sustainable Development. As a consequence I collect Costa Rican guidebooks. The previous guide by this author was good and I looked forward to this one.

This one was a bit of a disappointment. The guide presents a good straight forward description of Costa Rica and is still a useful tool for travellers.

Where this book suffers is in the details. I first came aware of this when I was trying to use it in Monteverde and I found out that there were many errors in the map presented. I eventually learned that the map presented things as they were in arly 1997. This is a real problem for a guide published in 2000 especially since there are guides published in 1999 that have more up to date maps than this one.

The discussion of the Southern Talamanca Coast also suffers. Cahuita is discussed in greater detail than Puerto Viejo even though the latter has become the bigger tourist destination in the past 5 years. Once again, the layout of this book seems to be based on what existed in 1996-97 rather than what exists today.

Lack of detailed, useful information also haunts the ArenalVolcano/La Fortuna disussions.

In summary, Paul Glassman's Costa Rica Guide covers the basics but does not provide the type of helpful detail that many other guides provide. Normally the more recently a guide is published, the more useful it is. However in this case, there are guides published in 1999 and even 1998 that contain more useful and sometimes more up to date information than this year 2000 publication.

3.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, June 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Costa Rica Guide: Your Passport to Great Travel (Open Road Best of Costa Rica) (Paperback)

Hi,

I am working at Ilisa Language Instute in Costa Rica, San Jose and I want to say that this book helps us a lot to give our students helpfull information about getting around in Costa Rica. Thanks!